All that did not help. To digress... I was looking at the course of nuclear physics research 1900 - 1942. It looks like a small jump to speed a few key steps up. That is Italy getting to a experimental reactor for power generation circa 1940.
How powerful could Italy have become by 1940 if it wasn't run by a strutting buffoon?
- Thread starter Johnrankins
- Start date
All that did not help. To digress... I was looking at the course of nuclear physics research 1900 - 1942. It looks like a small jump to speed a few key steps up. That is Italy getting to a experimental reactor for power generation circa 1940.
Grey Wolf
Donor
I suppose you have to look at is WHAT would make it stronger? And how doable is that?
- Does taking Abyssinia have any strategic purpose? Well, yes it joins Eritrea to the Italian Somali holdings. NOW those latter are only colonial rather than protectorates because Mussolini started a war to conquer them in the 1920s. If they had remained protectorates, then only Eritrea would really count. It COULD be argued that only Eritrea ever really counted strategically. But there is also the question of face - if Italy alone is not sorting out its colonial holdings, but letting them remain more loosely aligned, they are going to look like a more second class power. Abyssinia was a difficulty in the short-term due to sanctions, and no gain in the medium-term due to WW2, but had Italy avoided the latter, it MIGHT have developed into a more strategic asset, whilst avoiding involvement in the war would have led to the abolition of sanctions.
- What happens if Italy does not involve itself in the Spanish Civil War? A lot of its modern aerial and naval forces are now untested. It might again have some boons in international relations, but as stated above staying neutral in WW2 would have repaired most of the damage anyway. After Abyssinia, involvement in Spain didn't do a great deal MORE damage to Italy's standing.
- Does taking Abyssinia have any strategic purpose? Well, yes it joins Eritrea to the Italian Somali holdings. NOW those latter are only colonial rather than protectorates because Mussolini started a war to conquer them in the 1920s. If they had remained protectorates, then only Eritrea would really count. It COULD be argued that only Eritrea ever really counted strategically. But there is also the question of face - if Italy alone is not sorting out its colonial holdings, but letting them remain more loosely aligned, they are going to look like a more second class power. Abyssinia was a difficulty in the short-term due to sanctions, and no gain in the medium-term due to WW2, but had Italy avoided the latter, it MIGHT have developed into a more strategic asset, whilst avoiding involvement in the war would have led to the abolition of sanctions.
- What happens if Italy does not involve itself in the Spanish Civil War? A lot of its modern aerial and naval forces are now untested. It might again have some boons in international relations, but as stated above staying neutral in WW2 would have repaired most of the damage anyway. After Abyssinia, involvement in Spain didn't do a great deal MORE damage to Italy's standing.
Economically, the following missteps can be listed:
- In 1926 Mussolini and company deliberately underwent deflation in response to inflationary pressures and weakening of the Lira on currency markets. This was a mistake, resulting in an immediate recession and motivated by the Lira’s decline being an attack on Mussolini’s pride.
- Autarky was a persistent brainbug - the Battle of the Grain in 1925 is generally credited with inducing or sustaining significant inefficiencies in the Italian agricultural industry by lack of competition. His post-Abyssinia measures were even worse.
- The response to the Great Depression was far too politically motivated and mostly consisted of putting ever-more sectors of the economy under state control.
Mussolini’s policies did include one good, IMO: the Fascists spent a lot of money on infrastructural and social welfare programs. Regardless, it’s clear that a government less concerned with it’s dictator’s pride and need for control would result in a larger Italian economy, given the Fascists underperformed Italy’s pre-WW1 economic policy.
- In 1926 Mussolini and company deliberately underwent deflation in response to inflationary pressures and weakening of the Lira on currency markets. This was a mistake, resulting in an immediate recession and motivated by the Lira’s decline being an attack on Mussolini’s pride.
- Autarky was a persistent brainbug - the Battle of the Grain in 1925 is generally credited with inducing or sustaining significant inefficiencies in the Italian agricultural industry by lack of competition. His post-Abyssinia measures were even worse.
- The response to the Great Depression was far too politically motivated and mostly consisted of putting ever-more sectors of the economy under state control.
Mussolini’s policies did include one good, IMO: the Fascists spent a lot of money on infrastructural and social welfare programs. Regardless, it’s clear that a government less concerned with it’s dictator’s pride and need for control would result in a larger Italian economy, given the Fascists underperformed Italy’s pre-WW1 economic policy.
IIRC at the end of WW2 there was some oil found in the Pianura Padana, you could make them find it in the 30's.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
That could be quite *bad* and destructive for Italy if Italy has this war with Germany too late, when Germany is too strong and if it happens to lack adequate allies for this struggle (or those Allies come in too late only after much damage has been done) and loses men and material and borderlands, with additional borderlands ravaged.
Before annexing the Sudetenland the German army was very bad and most of the fighting will happen on Austria, and Southern Tirol wasn't a core region of Italy even if it were to become a battleground. And there's basically no way Germany puts the Sudetenland before Austria.
Brilliant idea! Someone should make a half-timeline about that and leave it abandoned for over a decade.
Balbo's IMO (obviously) the best case for a successful-ish Fascist Italy. Balbo was a Magnificent Bastard and a fantastic organizer and had the charisma and political acumen to hold Italy together, but was also a narcissistic bully with blind spots and he certainly wasn't God, and there were massive systemic issues that nobody could easily overcome. RL kicked my family in the balls necessitating my abandonment of the TL, so I never got to WWII and beyond, but Balbo was an anglophile and hated the Nazis (as Gov of Libya, which he ran like a model colony, he trolled Goering by taking him to lunch with his Jewish friends), so Italy ends up an Ally and there's no Rome-Berlin Axis. I was planning on his invasion of Yugoslavia becoming a quagmire and nearly a disaster that while embarrassing gives him the opportunity for some needed reforms (with a little help from his UK friends). Still, though, Rome was nearly going to fall to the Wehrmacht imTL before the US & UK bailed him out. There'd be some Awesome Moments with Italian Frogmen, but largely Italy wouldn't be going toe-to-toe against Germany without major assists. We'd have then seen the boon of Libyan Oil meet the faceplant of Foreign Interventionism in the Cold War era followed by Franco-esque descent into Petro-authoritarian stagnation. It was no Utopia, even for the Italians. In my head canon I'd subtitled my TL "A Kinder, Gentler Machinegun Hand."
In short: pretty powerful if it played its cards right, but at best a second-rate power held aloft by US Power as a check against the USSR.